repeal of the corn laws, yet he had by his budgets
surrendered the whole principle of protection, and in
his speeches acknowledged that the protective duties on
corn rested on exceptional, and not necessarily permanent
grounds of assumed expediency. It would be idle to
attempt to determine exactly at what time these new
views took firm hold of his mind, or in what way he
would ultimately have given effect to them if the
prospect of famine in Ireland had not compelled him
to adopt a policy which, from a party point of view,
was premature, and only to be defended on the grounds
of urgent necessity. But we know, at any rate, that
the agitation of the League, or, as he himself phrased
it, "the conflict of arguments on the principle of a
restrictive policy," had produced a profound impression
upon him. As he told his constituents in 1847, "My
confidence in the validity of the reasons on which I had
myself heretofore relied for the maintenance of re-
strictions on the import of corn had been materially
weakened. It had been weakened by the conflict of
arguments on the principle of a restrictive policy; by
many concurring proofs that the wages of labour do
not vary with the price of corn; by the contrast pre-
sented in two successive periods of dearth and abundance
in the health, morals, and tranquillity, and general
prosperity of the whole community; by serious doubts
whether, in the present condition of this country, cheap-
ness and plenty are not ensured for the future in a
higher degree by the free intercourse in corn than by
restrictions on its importation for the purpose of giving
protection to domestic agriculture." This passage puts
the whole argument for free trade in corn in a nutshell.

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